Henri
Lefebvre on Marx, Religion, Philosophy, Ideology & Politics

I

Marxian
Thought and Sociology
[excerpt]

This
brief study grew out of what we have referred to elsewhere [1] as "a
new reading of Marx." What we have in mind is not another
"interpretation," but first and foremost an attempt to reconstruct
Marx's original thought. The attempt seems worth making in view of the
divergencies and contradictions that have marked the development of
"Marxist" thought in our time.

To
define the purpose of this book more closely, we shall begin by
recalling Marx's conception of the dialectical movement of reality and
truth. Our conclusions will come back to this point of departure. In
between we will analyze the hypotheses involved in greater detail and
develop a number of themes:

a.
The "truth of religion"—what religion really is—is
discovered in philosophy. This means that philosophy contributes a
radical criticism of religion, that it lays bare the essence of
religion, namely, the initial and fundamental alienation of the human
creature, root of all alienation, and that it can demonstrate how this
alienation came about. This particular truth was arrived at gradually,
in the course of long and bitter struggles. Born of religion,
philosophy grows up in ground religion has prepared and battles hard
against it, not always victoriously.

b.
The truth of philosophy—what philosophy really
is—is discovered in politics. Philosophical
ideas—views of the world, of society, and of man elaborated
by philosophers—have always been related in some way to
political issues and goals. This has been so whether the philosophers
took their stand for or against the powers that be. A cultivated human
reason arises in two contradictory yet closely linked ways: as raison
d'état (law, the
state's organizational capacity, its ideological power), and as
philosophical reason (organized discourse, logic, systematic thought).
This long philosophical and political development culminates in the
perfect philosophical‑political system: Hegelianism. Its very
perfection brings about its disintegration. The radical critique which
accomplishes this salvages still usable bits and pieces from the
wreckage: specifically, the method (logic and dialectics) and certain
concepts (totality, negativity, alienation).

c.
Now, are politics and the state self‑sufficient? Do they contain and
control the truth of the reality that is history? Marx denies this
Hegelian thesis. The truth of politics, and hence of the state, he
maintains, is to be found in society: social relationships account for
political forms. They are the living, active relationships among people
(groups, classes, individuals). Contrarily to what Hegel thought, what
he called "civil society" has more truth and more reality than
political society. To be sure, these social relationships do not exist
in some substantial, absolute fashion, they do not subsist "in the
air." They have a material foundation—the productive forces,
that is to say, tools and machines, also the way the work is organized.
Tools and techniques, however, are used and are effective only within
the framework of a social division of labor, are directly dependent on
the social conditions of production and ownership, on the existing
social groups and classes (and their conflicts). These active
relationships taken as a whole make it possible to delimit the concept
of praxis
(social action).

This
dialectical theory of truth and reality is inseparable from a given
society's actual conduct of life. Both theory and practice are based
upon one essential idea, that of "overcoming," of "going
beyond"—it is this that unites them because this "going
beyond" is at once theoretical and practical, real and ideal, is
determined by both past and present activity. The Marxian "going
beyond" entails a critique of the completed Hegelian synthesis: the
latter in effect eliminates dialectical movement, historical time, and
practical action. Religion can and must be overcome: it has been
overcome in and through philosophy. The overcoming of religion means
its disappearance: religious alienation, the root of all alienation,
will be eradicated. The process of going beyond philosophy differs from
the overcoming of religion: it is more complex. Against the traditional
philosophies (including materialism with its emphasis on the abstract
"thing") we must first of all rehabilitate the world of the senses,
rediscover their richness and meaning. This is what is usually called
Marx's "materialism." The speculative, systematic, abstract aspects of
philosophy are rejected. But philosophy does not just vanish as if it
had never been. It leaves behind it the spirit of radical criticism,
dialectical thought which grasps the ephemeral side of existence,
dissolves and destroys it—the power of the negative. Besides
leaving us a certain number of concepts, it opens up the possibility of
a full flowering of human potentialities—reconciliation of
the real and the rational, of spontaneity and thought, and the
appropriation of human and extra‑human nature. Man has an "essence,"
but this essence is not something given once and for all, a biological
and anthropological datum going back to the earliest manifestations of
humanity. It is a developing thing; more than that, it is the essential
core, the quintessence of the actual process of historical development.

The
human species has a history: like any other reality, "generic" man
comes into being gradually. Philosophers have formulated the essence of
man in several different ways; they have also played a part in
developing it, in constituting it, by singling out certain crucial
features which sum up social development. Philosophers proved incapable
of realizing this philosophical project which in any case was
incompletely and abstractly formulated. Consequently, to go beyond
philosophy means to bring this project to realization, and at the same
time to put an end to philosophical alienation. In the course of its
sometimes acute conflicts with the state and political society, with
all the forms of alienation (each of these presenting itself as an
immutable, eternal essence—religion, politics, technology,
art, etc.), philosophy is brought down to earth, becomes "worldly,"
sheds its philosophical form. It realizes itself in the world, it
becomes the world’s actual doing and making.

Going
beyond politics implies the withering away of the state and the
transfer of its functions, also of the rationality it monopolizes (on
which it superimposes its own interests, those of the government and
the bureaucracy), to organized social relationships. More precisely,
democracy holds the key to what is true about all political forms: they
all lead to democracy, but democracy lives only by struggling to
preserve itself, and by going beyond itself toward a society freed from
the state and from political alienation. The rationality that is
immanent in social relationships, despite their conflicts or rather in
so far as these conflicts are stimulating and creative, is thus
salvaged. The management of things will replace the coercive power of
the state over people.

And
so we come to a fundamental idea. Social relations (including juridical
relations of ownership and property) constitute the core of the social
whole. They structure it, serve as intermediary (that which "mediates")
between the foundation or "substructure" (the productive forces, the
division of labor) and the "superstructures" (institutions,
ideologies). Though they do not exist substantially in the manner of
things, it is they that have proved the most enduring over the ages.
They render possible a future reconstruction of the individual on new
foundations, so that he will no longer be negated, reduced to an
abstract fiction, or driven back upon a self cut off from other selves.
The immanent rationality which has been constituted and developed in
the course of historical struggles between peoples, nations, classes,
and groups, will be able to grow and bloom. Praxis is not confined to
this rationality. In the broadest sense, praxis also includes the
action of forces alien to man, those of alienation and alienated
reason, i.e., ideologies. Neither the irrational nor the creative
capacities that go beyond the rationality immanent in social life dare
be left out of account. Nevertheless, this rationality, with its
problems, its glaring gaps, and its potentialities, lies at the core of
praxis.

When
we get to the very heart of Marx's thought (which he took over from
Hegel, transforming it), what we find is a search for an over‑all
thesis concerning the relation between human activity and its
accomplishments. We recognize the philosophical problem of the relation
between subject and object, freed of abstract speculative trappings. To
Marx, the "subject" is always social man, the individual viewed in his
actual relationships with groups, classes, society as a whole. The
"object" to him is the products of nature, the productions of mankind,
including techniques, ideologies, institutions, artistic and cultural
works. Now, man's relations with that which he produces by his unaided
efforts are twofold. On the one hand he realizes himself in them. There
is no activity that does not give form to some object, that does not
have some issue or result which its author enjoys directly or
indirectly. On the other hand—or rather, at the same
time—man loses himself in his works. He loses his way among
the products of his own effort, which turn against him and weight him
down, become a burden. At one moment, he sets off a succession of
events that carries him away: this is history. At another moment, what
he has created takes on a life of its own that enslaves him: politics
and the state. Now his own invention dazzles and fascinates him: this
is the power of ideology. Now the thing he has produced with his own
hands—more accurately, the
abstract thing—tends
to turn him into a thing himself, just another commodity, an object to
be bought and sold.

In
short, individual and social man's relation to objects is one of
otherness and alienation, self‑realization and loss of self. Hegel had
grasped this twofold process, but incompletely and imperfectly, getting
his terms turned around or upside down. Marxian thought rectifies the
distortion, puts human thought, human history (which Hegel understood,
but "upside down") "back on its feet." Hegel viewed the process whereby
products, goods, works are created as a process of alienation in which
man's activity is swallowed up in the object; he viewed the alienating
factor, namely, the abstractness of the thing created, as a product of
human consciousness, of man reduced to mere consciousness of himself.

As
for the process of disalienation, Hegel conceived of it one-sidely and
speculatively. According to him, disalienation is achieved by
philosophical awareness. According to Marx, it is achieved in the
course of actual struggles, i.e., on the practical plane, and theory is
but one means (element, stage, intermediary), a necessary but
insufficient one, in these multiple, multiform struggles. Thus a
specific alienation can be clearly defined only with reference to a
possible disalienation, i.e., by showing how it can be overcome
actually, by what practical means. The worst alienation is the blocking
up of development.

This
dialectical movement with its three fundamental concepts of truth,
going beyond, and disalienation characterizes every aspect of Marx's
writings, the order in which they were written, their inner logic, the
very movement of his thought.

The
critical attitude, the negative "moment" or stage, is fundamental to
cognition. There can be no cognition without a critique of received
ideas and existing reality, particularly in the social sciences.
According to Marx, the foundation of all criticism is criticism of
religion. Why? Because religion sanctions the separation of man from
himself, the cleavage between the sacred' and the profane, between the
supernatural and nature.

“The
critique of religion is the prerequisite of all criticism . . . . The
foundation of this critique is the following: man makes religion,
religion does not make man.” [2]

Alienation
is defined not only as man's losing himself in the external material
world or in formless subjectivity; it is also, and above all, defined
as a split between the objectifying and the subjectifying processes in
the individual, so that the unity between them is destroyed. What
religion is, is the consciousness of the man who has not found himself
or who, struggling to find his essential reality, has lost it and gone
astray. Such a man, however, is not some abstract being. He is social
man: "This state, this society produces religion," a mistaken, split,
isolated consciousness—"an inverted world." [3]

Philosophy
claims to show the true nature of this world, and in a sense the claim
is justified. Philosophy unmasks religion as the general theory of this
inverted world, as its encyclopaedic guide, its popular logic, its
"spiritual point d'honneur,"
and its moral justification. Philosophy liberates man from
nonphilosophy, i.e., from fantastic ideas uncritically accepted.
Consequently philosophy is the spiritual quintessence of its epoch.

In
his doctoral thesis (1839/41) Marx had said that philosophy,
essentially Promethean, rejects "all heavenly and earthly gods who do
not recognize that man's consciousness is the highest divinity." [4]
All the same, philosophy is no more than theory. It comes into being as
the truth about the nonphilosophical world—religion,
mythology, and magic—and is in turn confronted with a
nonphilosophical world of a different, kind—a world of
practical activities, ranging from the most mundane to the political.
The philosopher comes into collision with these activities. He cannot
affect them, he cannot organize them, he cannot transform them. He is
thus led to the view that there is something intrinsically inadequate
about philosophy. As he confronts the nonphilosophical world, his
philosophical consciousness is split. Nor can he do anything to prevent
this. He is driven on the one hand to this or that species of
voluntarism, on the other hand to positivism. Thus two opposite
tendencies arise. The first upholds the concept, the principle of
philosophy: this is a theoretical tendency that attempts to derive
practical energy from philosophy: the mind's power of becoming an
active force in the world. The attempt comes down to one of realizing
philosophy. The other tendency criticizes philosophy, stresses man's
needs and aspirations, what is actually going on in history. This is an
attempt to abolish philosophy. These two tendencies break up the
historical process, split it in two, block its development. Both
involve a fundamental error. That of the first is to suppose that
philosophy can be realized without being abolished itself. That of the
second is to suppose that philosophy can be abolished without being
realized. [5 ]

Philosophy,
in short, like religion before it, aims at changing the world but the
philosopher can no more, realize his ambition than the religious man
can realize his. To the extent he does realize it, he destroys himself.
Philosophy defines the nonphilosophical world the philosopher is to
penetrate and transform, yet cannot penetrate it, cannot change reality
into truth by its own means. The image of man it forms cannot be made
real.

Thus
there is a philosophical alienation (which seeks to invest the world,
to become historical and universal). Radical criticism shows first of
all that "philosophy is merely religion translated into thought," hence
equally to be rejected as another form of the alienation of the essence
of man. "The philosophical consciousness is merely the consciousness of
the alienated world." And "the philosopher (who is himself an abstract
version of alienated man) sets himself up as the measuring rod of the
alienated world." [6]

Actually,
philosophical discussions have a political meaning in every case, i.e.,
they are related in some way to given social groups or classes, and to
the conflicts among them. Philosophy differs from religion because it
criticizes religion, from the state because its problems—and
solutions—are not directly political. However, generally
speaking, philosophical ideas are those of the dominant groups and
classes. The philosophical currents that represent the interests,
goals, and prospects of the oppressed have never been very strong, and
have been readily defeated. Philosophers, advancing motives of their
own, always came to terms with religion and the state, but despite such
compromises inevitable conflicts arose within philosophy. Worse still,
the most elaborate, the most systematic, the most dogmatic philosophies
were all bound up with one or another bureaucracy. For every
bureaucracy possesses a system of knowledge in self‑justification,
which sets standards for filling its ranks and promoting its members,
for legitimizing the hierarchical order.

In
this view, [7] philosophical materialism is especially suitable for
giving expression to the corporative and professional groups at the
basis of a bureaucratized society—what is called "civil
society." Spiritualism, on the other hand, is better suited for the
"apparatus" of a narrowly political bureaucracy. However, there are
constant mutual borrowings, encroachments, and compromises between the
two.

Summing
up, philosophy must be superseded, i.e., its project must be realized
on the one hand, and on the other hand the philosopher's alienation,
philosophical abstraction, systematized dogmatism must be rejected.
Where is the truth of philosophy to be found? In the history of the
state which epitomizes social struggles and social needs. The truth we
are looking for is the social truth. [8] Once historical and social
reality has been unmasked, philosophy loses all claim to autonomous
existence; it is no longer needed. Its place would be filled by, at
most, a summary of the most over‑all results to be extracted from the
historical development. What are these results? Let us recall them: an
image of human potentialities; the methods, concepts, and spirit of a
radical criticism freed of all philosophical compromises. What use,
then, do they serve? They are extremely important: the philosophical
heritage is not to be scorned. Thanks to it we are enabled to lay out
the historical materials in a meaningful order. Philosophy bequeaths us
some valuable resources, on condition we do not, like the philosophers,
expect it to supply us "with a recipe or schema within which to
legitimize the setting up of historical epochs." [9] Philosophy takes
us only to the point where the real problems arise: exposition of the
past, the present, and the possible; a correct ordering of the
materials of reality; the transformation of reality according to the
potentialities it actually holds. Philosophy supplies us with some
means for addressing ourselves to these problems, for formulating and
solving them. In short, via the critical study of religion and the
political state, it leads us as far as the social sciences. No farther.

3

Ideology
and the Sociology of Knowledge
[excerpt]

[.
. .] it is erroneous to maintain that every ideology is pure illusion.
It appears that ideology is not, after all, to be accounted for by a
sort of ontological fate that compels consciousness to differ from
being. Ideologies have truly historical and sociological foundations,
in the division of labor on the one hand, in language on the other.

Man
possesses consciousness; on this score the philosophers who formulated
and elucidated the concept of consciousness were right. Where the
philosophers went astray was when they isolated consciousness from the
conditions and objects of consciousness, from it diverse and
contradictory relations with all that is not consciousness, when they
conceived of consciousness as "pure," but above all when they ascribed
"purity" to the historically earliest forms of consciousness. In this
way they raised insoluble speculative problems. For from the outset the
supposed purity of consciousness is tainted with original sin. It
cannot escape the curse of "being soiled with a matter that here takes
the form of agitated layers of air, in short, language." Language is as
old as consciousness. There is no consciousness without language, for
language is the real, practical consciousness, which exists for other
human beings, and hence for beings that have become conscious. Marx
discovers that language is not merely the instrument of a pre-existing
consciousness. It is at once the natural and the social medium of
consciousness, its mode of existence. It comes into being with the need
for communication, with human intercourse in the broadest sense.
Consequently, being inseparable from language, consciousness is a
social creation.

It
remains to note what human beings communicate to one another, what they
have to say. To begin with, the objects of their communications include
the sensorily perceived environment and their immediate ties with other
human beings. They also refer to nature in so far as it is a hostile
power before which man feels helpless. Human consciousness begins with
an animal, sensuous awareness of nature, though even at this stage it
is already social. This gives rise to a first misrepresentation: a
religion of nature which mistakes social relations (however elementary)
for natural relations,
and vice versa. What we might call "tribal consciousness" emerges out
of earlier barbarism, earlier illusions, as productivity expands, as
tools are perfected, and as needs and population increase. What had
hitherto been a purely biological division of labor (based on sex, age,
physical strength, etc.) begins to become a technological and social
division of labor. As the society develops, it takes on ever new forms
and subdivisions (city vs.
countryside, social vs.
political functions, trade vs.
production—not to mention the ever sharper distinction that
comes to be drawn between individual and social labor, partial and
over‑all labor, etc.). So far as the development of ideologies is
concerned, the most important division is that between physical and
intellectual labor, between creative action (operations upon things
with the aid of tools and machines) and action on human beings by means
of nonmaterial instruments, the primary and most important of which is
language. From this point
forward, consciousness becomes capable of detachment from reality,
may now begin to construct abstractions, to create a "pure theory."
Theology supplants the religion of nature, philosophy supplants
religion, morality supplants traditional manners and customs, etc. Ever
more elaborate representations are built up, and overlay the direct,
immediate consciousness, now felt to be at once crude and deluded, for
having remained at the natural, sensorial level. When these abstract
representations come into conflict with reality, i.e., with existing
social relations, the social relations themselves have become
contradictory, both as between themselves and between them and their
social base—namely, the productive forces (the technological
division and the social organization of labor).

These
representations give rise to theories. Consequently, what we are
dealing with is not detached, isolated representations, but ideas given
coherent form by "ideologists," a new kind of specialist. Those who
wield material (economic and political) power within the established
social and juridical order also wield "spiritual" power. The
representations, i.e., the consciousness of society, are elaborated
into a systematic idealizing of existing conditions, those conditions
that make possible the economic, social, and political primacy of a
given group or class. Individuals active on the plane of praxis play an
important part in forming the general consciousness and in excluding
representations contrary to the interest of the ruling groups. As a
result, "their ideas are the dominant ideas of their epoch," but in a
way which leaves room for invention. For instance, when the king, the
nobility, and the bourgeoisie are striving with one another for
dominance, we find a political theory of the separation of powers. To
understand a given ideology, we have to take into account everything
that is going on in the higher circles of the society in
question—classes, fractions of classes, institutions, power
struggles, diverging and converging interests. It must also be kept in
mind that the "ideologists" themselves are rarely active as members of
their given class or group. This detachment on their part is passed on
in their "treatments" of the realities they represent, whether in
justification or condemnation. The theoretical conflicts are not
unrelated to the actual conflicts discussed, but the verbalizations do
not accurately, point by point, reflect the realities they represent.
This leaves room for revolutionary ideas when a revolutionary group or
class actually exists in the society, with a practical end in view:
namely, the transformation of society through solving its problems,
resolving existing contradictions.

According
to Marx (and Engels), ideologies possess the following characteristics:

1
Their starting point is reality, but a fragmentary, partial reality; in
its totality it escapes the ideological consciousness because the
conditions of this consciousness are limited and limiting, and the
historical process eludes the human will under such conditions of
intervention.

2
They refract (rather than reflect) reality via
pre-existing representations, selected by the dominant groups and
acceptable to them. Old problems, old points of view, old vocabularies,
traditional modes of expression thus come to stand in the way of the
new elements in society and new approaches to its problems.

3
Ideological representations, though distorted and distorting not
because of some mysterious fate but as a result of the historical
process within which they become a factor, tend to constitute a
self‑sufficient whole and lay claim to be such. The whole, however,
comprises praxis, and it is precisely this that ideologies distort by
constructing an abstract, unreal, fictitious theory of the whole. The
degrees of reality and unreality in any ideology vary with the
historical era, the class relations, and other conditions obtaining at
a given moment. Ideologies operate by extrapolating the reality they
interpret and transpose. They culminate in systems (theoretical,
philosophical, political, juridical), all of which are characterized by
the fact that they lay behind the actual movement of history. At the
same time it must be admitted that every ideology worthy of the name is
characterized by a certain breadth and a real effort at rationality.
One typical example studied by Marx and Engels is German philosophy
between the end of the eighteenth and the middle of the nineteenth
century. Every great ideology strives to achieve universality. The
claim to universality is unjustified, however, save when the ideology
represents a revolutionary class during the time it serves as the
vehicle of historical interests and goals with genuinely universal
significance. This was the case with the middle classes in the period
of their rise to power.

4
Consequently, ideologies have two aspects. On the one hand, they are
general, speculative, abstract; on the other, they are representative
of determinate, limited, special interests. In setting out to answer
all questions, all problems, they create a comprehensive view of the
world. At the same time they reinforce specific ways of life, behavior
patterns, "values" (if we may use here a terminology that does not
occur in Marx's writings).

Ideologies
are thus ignorant of the exact nature of their relations with
praxis—do not really understand their own conditions and
presuppositions, nor the actual consequences to which they are leading.
Ignorant of the implications of their own theories, they comprehend
neither the causes of which they are effects, nor the effects which
they are actually causing; the real why and how escapes them. At the
same time they are inescapably involved in praxis. They are at once
starting points and results of action in the world (however effective
or ineffectual). Ideological representations invariably serve as
instruments in the struggles between groups (peoples, nations) and
classes (and fractions of classes). But their intervention in such
struggles takes the form of masking the true interests and aspirations
of the groups involved, universalizing the particular and mistaking the
part for the whole.

5
Since they have a starting point and a foothold in reality (in praxis),
or rather to the extent that they do, ideologies are not altogether
false. According to Marx, we have to distinguish among ideology,
illusion, and lies, on the one hand, and ideology, myths, and utopias
on the other hand. Ideologies may contain class illusions, have
recourse to outright lying in political struggles and yet be related to
myths and utopias. Historically, all sorts of illusory, deceptive
representations have been inextricably mixed up in ideological thinking
with real concepts—i.e. scientific insights. Sometimes the
ideology has served as the vehicle of sound thinking, sometimes as
agent of its distortion or suppression. The evaluation of ideological
thinking can only be done post facto, patiently, with the aid of some
more or less radical critical thought. The typical example cited by
Marx and Engels is German philosophy. Thanks to Germany's economic and
social backwardness, its thinkers were capable of speculative thought
in the first half of the nineteenth century, whereas in the same period
English thinkers were creating theories of political economy (the
theory of competitive capitalism) and the French were operating on the
plane of direct political action (making revolutions). The Germans
transposed praxis to the realm of metaphysics. In their systems it is
so heavily disguised as to be all but unrecognizable. This was
perfectly in keeping with the actual prospects of their nation, which
were at once limitless (in the abstract) and severely limited
(practically speaking). At the same time, however, they did give
expression to some new concepts—among others, the concept of
dialectical change—which were eventually integrated in
scientific theory and revolutionary praxis. It is incumbent on critical
thought and revolutionary action to salvage what is valid from the
wreckage of collapsing systems and crumbling ideologies.

6
Thus it may be said that ideologies make room for nonscientific
abstractions, whereas concepts are scientific abstractions (for
instance, the concepts of use value and of the commodity). Such
concepts do not remain forever shrouded in the mists of abstraction; as
we have seen, they are integrated in praxis, though we still have to
specify just how. They enter into praxis in two ways: as a constraining
factor, and as a form of persuasion. Abstract ideas have no power in
themselves, but people who hold power (economic or political) make use
of representations in order to justify their actions. Moreover,
and—this is the main point, the most completely elaborated
ideological representations find their way into language, become a
permanent part of it. They supply vocabularies, formulations, turns of
thought which are also turns of phrase. Social consciousness, awareness
of how multifarious and contradictory social action can be, changes
only in this way: by acquiring new terms and idioms to supplant
obsolete linguistic structures. Thus it is not language that generates
what people say. Language does not possess this magical power or
possesses it only fitfully and dubiously. What people say derives from
praxis—from the performance of tasks, from the division of
labor—arises out of real actions, real struggles in the
world. What they actually do, however, enters consciousness only by way
of language, by being said. Ideologies mediate between praxis and
consciousness (i.e., language). This mediation can also serve as a
screen, as a barrier, as a brake on consciousness. Consider the words,
symbols, expressions that religions have created. Revolutionary theory,
too, has created its own language and introduced it into the social
consciousness; the most favorable conditions for this occur when a
rising class is mature enough to take in new terms and assimilate new
concepts. Even then we must expect to run into formidable obstacles.
These are created not only by voluntary actions of contemporaries, but
also by long-accepted ideas reflecting contemporaries' limited
horizons. An individual member of the middle class is not necessarily
malicious or stupid, but he is incapable of rising above the mental
horizon of his class. His outlook is formulated in the medium of
language, which moreover is the language of society as a whole. Now,
language—not only the language of ideologists (e.g.,
philosophers) but also of all those who speak—distorts
practical reality. According to Marx, [27] neither thought nor language
forms an autonomous domain. Language, this repository of ideas in the
keeping of society as a whole, is full of errors and illusions, trivial
truths as well as profound ones. There is always the problem of making
the transition from the world of representations (ideas) to the real
world, and this problem is none other than that of making the
transition from language to life. The problem thus has multiple
aspects—the actually existing language, ideologies, praxis,
the class situation, the struggles actually going on. When the
bourgeois speaks of "human" rights, "human" conditions, etc., he
actually means bourgeois conditions, bourgeois rights, etc. He does not
distinguish between the two because his very language has been
fashioned by the bourgeoisie. [28]

Marx,
then, tries to situate language within praxis, in relation to
ideologies, classes, and social relationships. Language is important,
but is not by itself the crucial factor. Let us go back briefly to the
commodity. In one sense, every commodity is a sign: qua
exchange value it is only the
outward and visible sign of the human labor expended to produce it.
However, “If it be declared that the social characters
assumed by objects, or the material form assumed by the social
qualities of labor under the regime of a definite mode of production,
are mere signs, it is in the same breath also declared that these
characteristics are arbitrary fictions sanctioned by the so‑called
universal consent of mankind.” [29]

This
view, according to which every commodity is a sign and which was much
in favor during the eighteenth century, is ideological; it is not a
conceptual, scientific account of the puzzling forms assumed by social
relations. [30] In analyzing language or this other form, the
commodity, we must isolate its formal character, but we must never
separate it from its other aspects—content, development,
history, social relations, praxis.

To
gain a better understanding of the Marxian concept of ideology, we may
compare it with the "collective representations" of the Durkheim
school. In a way, every ideology is a "collective representation," but
whereas to Durkheim society is an abstract entity, to Marx it results
from practical interactions among groups and individuals. Thus a given
ideology does not characterize a society as a whole; it arises out of
individual inventions made within the social framework in which groups,
whether castes or classes, struggle to assert themselves and gain
dominance. On the other hand, ideologies do not affect individual minds
from the outside, for they are not extraneous to, the real life of
individuals. Ideologies utilize the
language of real life, and hence
are not vehicles of the coercive pressure society exerts on the
individual (according to Durkheim's sociology). Those who use
ideologies rarely hesitate to resort to force when this is justified by
the same ideologies, in which case we have brutal constraint exercised
by the powers‑that‑be. Ideologies as such, however, as instruments of
persuasion, guide the individual and give him a sense of purpose.
Viewed from outside, ideologies seem self-contained, rational systems;
viewed from inside, they imply faith, conviction, adherence. In
pledging his allegiance to a given ideology the individual believes he
is fulfilling himself. In actual fact he does not fulfill himself, he
loses himself, he becomes alienated, though this is not immediately
apparent to him, and when it does become apparent it is often too late.
Thus ideologies impose certain obligations on individuals, but these
obligations are voluntarily accepted. The inner or outer penalties
imposed by ideologies are expected, demanded by the individuals
concerned. Thus the power of ideologies is very different from that of
Durkheim's "collective representations."

Every
society, every authority has to be accepted. A given social structure,
with its specific social and juridical relations, must obtain the
consensus of a majority, if not the totality of its members. No social
group, no constituted society is possible without such adherence, and
sociologists are justified in stressing this consensus. But how is the
consensus arrived at? How do conquerors, rulers, masters, those in
power make oppression acceptable? Marx and Engels have repeatedly
emphasized the fact that no society is based on sheer brute force
alone. Every social form finds its rationale in the society's growth
and development, in the level its productive forces and social
relations have attained. It is the role of ideologies to secure the
assent of the oppressed and exploited. Ideologies represent the latter
to themselves in such a way as to wrest from them, in addition to
material wealth, their "spiritual" acceptance of this situation, even
their support. Class ideologies create three images of the class that
is struggling for dominance: an image for itself; an image of itself
for other classes, which exalts it; an image of itself for other
classes, which devalues them in their own eyes, drags them down, tries
to defeat them, so to speak, without a shot being fired. Thus the
feudal nobility put forward an image of itself—a multiple
image with multiple facets: the knight, the nobleman, the lord.
Similarly the middle class elaborated an image of itself for its own
use: as the bearer of human reason in history, as uniquely endowed with
good and honorable intentions, finally as alone possessed with capacity
for efficient organization. It also has its own images of the other
classes: the good worker, the bad worker, the agitator, the
rabble-rouser. Lastly it puts forward a self-image for the use of other
classes: how its money serves the general good, promotes human
happiness, how the middle‑class organization of society promotes
population growth and material progress.

No
historical situation can ever be stabilized once and for all, though
that is what ideologies aim at. Other forms of consciousness and rival
ideologies make their appearance and join the fray. Only another
ideology or a true theory can struggle against an ideology. No form of
consciousness ever constitutes a last, last word, no ideology ever
manages to transform itself into a permanent system. Why? Because
praxis always looks forward to new possibilities, a future different
from the present. The consensus an ideology succeeds in bringing about
in its heyday, when it is still growing and militant, eventually
crumbles away. It is supplanted by another ideology, one that brings
fresh criticism to bear on the existing state of affairs and promises
something new.

When
we analyze more closely the views on ideology propounded by Marx and
Engels, we make out the elements for an orderly outline of its origin
and development.

a.
First of all, some representations are illusory, for they arise prior
to the conditions under which concepts can be formed. Thus, before the
concept of historical time had arisen, there were representations
concerning the succession of events, how the undertakings of a given
society or group and its leaders were initiated and succeeded or failed
as they did. Such representations had a mythical, legendary, epical,
heroic character. Elaborated by still relatively undifferentiated
social groups, they were refined by priests and poets. The same is true
of the earliest representations of natural forces and of the few human
acts as yet capable of modifying natural processes. Such
representations ascribed to human beings, or rather to certain
individuals, a fictitious power of control over the unknown, and so
accounted for the lesser ability and inability of other men and of
society as a whole to do as much.

b.
Related to these elaborations arc the early cosmogonies and theogonies,
images of the world which were often projected against a background of
the actual life of social groups, and the actual organization in
villages and towns. These great constructions included interpretations
of the sexes (masculinity, femininity), of the family (according to
division of labor, age), of the elements (often presented in
pairs—earth and air, fire and water), of the relationship
between leaders and subordinates, of life and death.

Were
these grandiose images of society, time and space, a history scarcely
begun, the prehistory of the race—were they ideologies? Yes
and no. Yes, to the degree they justified the nascent inequalities
among men, including possession (primitive appropriation) of a
territory by a single group and seizure of the group
resources—the scanty surplus product—by its
leaders. No, because it is not yet possible to speak at this stage of
classes or even of castes. No, because these constructions of the mind
are works of art—more like monuments than abstract systems.
They belong to the same category as styles in art history, compendia of
moral wisdom, "cultures." They show to what extent rulers feel the need
to justify themselves in the eyes of the vanquished and the oppressed:
such works serve both to justify and to consolidate their rule.

c.
It does not seem that in Marx's view mythologies can be regarded as
ideologies. They are much closer to genuine poetry than to formal
constructions. Marx thought that Greek mythology, the soil that
nourished Greek art, was an expression of the real life of the people,
an ever fresh source of the "eternal" charm of this art. The Greek
myths and the Greek gods were symbols of man or rather of his powers.
They gave in magnified form a picture of how human beings appropriate
their own nature—in the various activities of their own lives
(warfare, metal working), in games, love, and enjoyment.

Cosmogonies,
myths, and mythologies are turned into ideologies only when they become
ingredients in religion, especially in the great religions that lay
claim to universality. Then the images and tales are cut off from the
soil that nourished them, the beauty of which they represented to the
eye and mind. Now they take on different meaning. The great religions'
all‑inclusive character and claim to universality are marked on the one
hand by abstractness and by loss of their original local flavor, and on
the other by an ever growing gap between individuals, between groups,
between peoples, and between classes. The great religions were born
concomitantly with consolidation of the power of the state, the
formation of nations, and the rise of class antagonisms. Religions make
use not of a knowledge freed of illusion, but of illusions antedating
knowledge. To these they add unmistakably ideological representations,
i.e., representations elaborated in order to disguise praxis and to
give it a specific direction. As theoretical constructions they
alternate between a kind of poetry borrowed from the earlier
cosmogonies and sheer mystification intended to justify the acts of the
powers‑that‑be.

Incontestably,
according to Marx, religion in general (religion to the extent it lays
claim to universality, to representing the fate of mankind, of the
human species) is the prototype and model of all ideology. All
criticism begins and is renewed again with the criticism of religion.
Radical criticism, i.e., criticism that goes to the roots, tirelessly
keeps going back to the analysis of religious alienation.

Summing
up Marx's thought, we can now formulate the sociological features of
any ideology. It deals with a segment of reality, namely, human
weakness: death, suffering, helplessness. It includes interpretations
of the wretched portion of reality, consciousness of which, if taken in
isolation and overemphasized, acts as a brake on all creation, all
progress. By virtue of their link with "reality"—a reality
transposed and interpreted—ideologies can affect reality by
imposing rules and limitations on actually living men. In other words,
ideologies can be part of actual experience, even though they are
unreal and formal, reflect only a portion of human reality. They offer
a way of seeing the world and of living, that is to say, up to a
certain point, a praxis which is at once illusory and efficacious,
fictitious and real.

Ideologies
account for and justify a certain number of actions and situations
which need to be accounted for and justified, the more so the wronger
and more absurd they are (i.e., in process of being surmounted and
superseded). Thus every ideology represents a vision or conception of
the world, a Weltanschauung based
on extrapolations and interpretations.

Another
feature of ideologies is their perfectibility. An ideology may
encounter problems, but not of a kind to shake it fundamentally.
Adjustment is made, details are altered, but the essentials are left
intact. This gives rise to passionate and passionately interesting
discussions between conservatives and innovators, dogmatists and
heretics, champions of the past and champions of the future. As a
result, a given ideology becomes associated with a group (or a class,
but always a group active within a class: other groups within this
class may remain ideologically passive, though they may be most active
in other respects). Within the group that takes up the ideology, it
serves as pretext for zealousness, sense of common purpose, and then
the group tends to become a sect. Adherence to the ideology makes it
possible to despise those who do not adhere to it, and, needless to
say, leads to their conversion or condemnation. It becomes a
pseudo‑totality which closes in upon itself the moment it runs into its
external or internal boundaries, whether limitations or outside
resistances. In short, it becomes a system.

Man
has emerged from nature in the course of the historical process of
production—production of himself and of material goods.
Consciousness, as we have seen, emerges at the level of the sensuous,
and then rises above it without being cut off from it. This practical
relationship, which is essentially and initially based upon labor, is
consequently broadened to include the entire praxis of a society in
which the various kinds of labor become differentiated and unequal. At
this point, objects, situations, actions acquire specific "meanings" in
relation to the over‑all "meaning" of social life and the course it
follows. However, the human groups assigned to perform productive
physical labor were unable for many a long century to elaborate a
conception adequate to their situation, to the part they actually
played in social praxis, which is the essence of their activity.
Multiple conflicts are caused by the scarcity of goods, poverty, and
bitter struggles over the tiny surplus of wealth produced. In the
course of these conflicts, the conditions that made possible production
of a surplus, however small, and sometimes production itself, were
destroyed. In peace as in war, the interests of the productive groups
were sacrificed. On the symbolic plane of ideology, these sacrifices
were given an aura of ideality and spirituality. In actual fact, there
was nothing mysterious about the sacrifice: the oppressed were
sacrificed to the oppressors, and the oppressors to the very conditions
of oppression—the gods, the Fates, the goals of their
political actions. As a result, products and works acquired a
transcendent significance, which amounted to an ideological and
symbolic negation of their actual significance. All this served to
justify the actions of the ruling groups and classes seeking to control
the means of production and lay hands on the surplus product. Man's
appropriation of nature took place within the framework of ownership,
that is, the privative appropriation of the social surplus by
privileged groups, to the exclusion of other groups, whether within the
given society or outside it, and so gave rise to endless tension and
struggle. Religion expressed this general attitude of the privileged
groups and classes, which was broadened into an ideology that held out
to other groups and classes the hope either of oppression eventually
coming to an end one day or of being allowed to share in the advantages
of oppression themselves.

The
features we have just stressed in religion (or, more accurately, in
religions which have theoretical systems) are also to be found in
philosophy, though there are certain differences. The philosophers
elaborate the incomplete rationality which is present in social praxis
and confusedly expressed in language—the logos. Thus
philosophy breaks off in turn from religion, from poetry, from
politics, and finally from scientific knowledge, and as against these
more or less specialized domains, claims to express totality. But
religion, the state, and even art and science make the same claim. The
difference is that, whereas the latter merely use the concept of
totality for their own purposes, philosophy also refines it. Unlike the
other ideological activities, philosophy contains a self-transcending
principle. Philosophical systems reflect human aspirations, they aim at
rigorous demonstrations, they express symbols of human reality. The
systems eventually disintegrate, but the problems they raised, the
concepts they formulated, the themes they treated do not disappear.
They enter into culture, affect all thought, in short, become part of
consciousness. The relationship between philosophy and praxis
(including the consciousness of praxis) is thus more complex and far
more fruitful than that between religion or the state and the same
praxis.

Among
the philosophical attempts at totality, i.e., at achieving a system at
once closed and encompassing all "existents," the systems of morals are
the most ideological in character. They set themselves above praxis,
promulgating absolute principles and eternal "ethical" truths. They
prescribe sacrifice for the oppressed, promising them compensations.
They also prescribe sacrifice for the oppressors, when the conditions
of their dominance are threatened. Consequently, every morality is
dictated by the ruling class, according to its needs and interests in a
given situation; the generality it claims is dubious, its universality
illusory. It is not on the moral (ethical) plane that the universal is
concretely realized. Morality substitutes fictitious needs and
aspirations reflecting the constant pressure of the ruling class for
the real needs and aspirations of the oppressed. More particularly,
under capitalism human needs diverge sharply into highly refined,
abstract needs on the one hand, and crude, grossly simplified needs on
the other. This dissociation is sanctioned and consecrated by the
bourgeois moralities. The latter go so far as to justify the state of
non‑having—the situation of man separated from objects and
works which are meaningful themselves and give concrete, practical
meaning to life.

"The
state of non‑having is the extremest form of spiritualism, a state in
which man is totally unreal and inhumanity totally real: it is a state
of very positive having—the having of hunger, cold, sickness,
crime, degradation, stupor, every conceivable inhuman and anti-natural
thing." [31]

Now,
objects, i.e., goods, products, and works of social man, are the
foundation of social man's objective being, his being for himself as
well as for others. To be deprived of objects is to be deprived of
social existence, of human relations with others and with oneself.
Morality qua
ideology masks this privation and even substitutes a fictitious
plenitude for it: a sense of righteousness, a mistaken, factitious
satisfaction in nonfulfillment of the self.

Political
economy (at least in its beginnings) elaborates scientific
concepts—social labor, exchange value, distribution of the
over‑all income, etc. At the same time it contains an ideology. It is a
"true moral science," even "the most moral of all the sciences." Its
gospel is saving, i.e., abstinence. "The less you are . . . the more
you have. . . . All the things you cannot do, your money can do." [32]
Thus scientific concepts are all mixed up with a moralistic ideology,
in a way its own authors do not notice. The wheat is separated from the
chaff only later, in the name of radical criticism, in connection with
revolutionary praxis.

Summing
up: as Marx saw it, ideology involves the old problem of error and its
relation to the truth. Marx does not formulate this problem in
abstract, speculative, philosophical terms, but in concrete historical
terms with reference to praxis. Unlike philosophy, the Marxian theory
of ideology tries to get back to the origin of representations. It
retains one essential philosophical contribution: emergent truth is
always mixed up with illusion and error. The theory discards the view
that error, illusion, falsity, stand off in sharp and obvious
distinction from knowledge, truth, certainty. There is continual
two-way dialectical movement between the true and the false, which
transcends the historical situation that gave rise to these
representations. As Hegel had seen, error and illusion are "moments" of
knowledge, out of which the truth emerges. But truth does not reside in
the Hegelian "spirit." It does not precede its historical and social
conditions, even though it may be anticipated. Thus Hegel's
philosophical—i.e., speculative, abstract—theory is
transformed into a historical and sociological theory, a continuation
of philosophy in the sense that it preserves the latter's universal
character.

The
representations men form of the world, of society, of groups and
individuals, remain illusory as long as the conditions for real
representation have not ripened. One notable example is how time was
represented—a sense of society, of the city‑state, as
existing in time—prior to the emergence of fully elaborated
concepts of history and historical knowledge. These last are rooted in
an active social consciousness of the changes taking place within the
praxis. While the mists surrounding natural phenomena are being
dispelled, the mystery (the opacity) of social life keeps thickening.
While increasing human control over nature (technology, the division of
labor) makes it possible to elaborate nonideological concepts of
physical nature, the actions of the ruling classes throw a veil of
obscurity over social life. Praxis expands in scope, grows more complex
and harder to grasp, while consciousness and science play an
increasingly effective part in it. Thus it has been possible for
illusory representations (mythologies, cosmogonies) to become an
integral part of styles and cultures (including Greek culture). They
must now give way to knowledge. Revolutionary praxis and Marxism qua
knowledge do away with the ideologies. According to Marx, Marxism has
gone beyond ideology—it signals and hastens the end of
ideology. Nor is it a philosophy, for it goes beyond philosophy and
translates it into practice. It is not a morality, but a theory of
moralities. It is not an aesthetics, but it contains a theory of works
of art, of the conditions for their production, how they originate and
how they pass away. It discloses—not by some power of "pure"
thought but by deeds (the revolutionary praxis)—the
conditions under which ideologies and works of man generally, including
whole cultures or civilizations, are produced, run their course, and
pass away.

It
is on the basis of conscious revolutionary praxis that thought and
action are articulated dialectically, and that knowledge "reflects"
praxis, i.e., is constituted as reflection on praxis. Until then
knowledge was characterized precisely by its failure to "reflect"
reality, namely, praxis, could only transpose it, distort it, confuse
it with illusions—in short, knowledge was ideological.

At
the height of its development, ideology becomes a weapon deliberately
used in the class struggle. It is a mystifying representation of social
reality, or the process of change, of its latent tendencies and its
future. At this stage—in contemporary racism, for
instance—the "real" element is present; the human species
does in fact include varieties and variations, ethnic groups and ethnic
differences. But in racism extrapolation and transposition are carried
to fantastic lengths; the extrapolation of a real element is combined
with "values," and the whole systematized with extreme rigidity.
Consequently racist ideology can hardly be mentioned in the same breath
with such a philosophy, say, as Kant's. In the twentieth century,
ideologizing has reached a sort of apogee within the framework of
imperialism, world wars, and a monopolistic capitalism linked with the
state. At the same time and because of this, ideology is discredited:
extreme ideologizing is accompanied by a certain conviction that "the
end of ideology" has been reached. But ideology is not so easily
eliminated; to the contrary, it is marked by sudden flare‑ups and makes
surprising comebacks. Aversion from ideological excess is no more than
a pale foretaste of the transparency still to he achieved by
revolutionary praxis and its theoretical elaboration on the basis of
Marx's work.

5

Political
Sociology: Theory of the State
[excerpt]

In
"On the Jewish Question," dating from about the same time [as
“A Critique of the Hegelian Philosophy of Right”,
1843] (Marx was twenty‑five), we read:

"Only
where the political state exists in its completeness can the relation
of the Jew, of the religious man generally, to the political state, and
therefore the relation of religion to the state, be studied in its
special features and in its purity. The criticism of this relationship
ceases to be theological criticism when the state ceases to adopt a
theological attitude towards religion, when its attitude towards
religion becomes purely political. The criticism then becomes criticism
of the political state. [52]

And
Marx goes on to say: "Political emancipation from religion is not
thorough‑going and consistent emancipation from religion, because
political emancipation is not effectual and consistent human
emancipation," i.e., where the Church has been separated from the state
we have merely an emancipation, not a complete liberation. In other
words, political emancipation and freedom coincide only partially; the
former leads in the direction of freedom, yet is only a degree or
historical stage in that process. Political emancipation is limited
because the state can free itself from a limitation without man being
really freed thereby; a state may become free, and yet its citizens
remain unfree. This is true of all states that achieve independence,
all new states, for instance; the people's belief that once they have
achieved national independence they will immediately become free is an
illusion. Consequently a state may be emancipated from religion, and
yet the great majority of its citizens may still profess religious
faith. The relation between the state, more particularly, between the
"free" state and religion, is nothing but a relation between the men
who constitute the state and the existing religions. Man frees himself
from one particular limitation through the intermediary of the state,
i.e., politically, but he himself rises above this limitation only in a
limited way: when he declares he is an atheist through the intermediary
of the state, i.e., when he declares that the state is atheistic, he
remains religiously limited. The state interposes itself between man
and human freedom; at best, when the state throws off one or another
fetter, such as a state religion, this is no more than an intermediate
stage in the realization of man's essence.

In
an important passage of the same essay Marx criticizes the internal
split within the political state between man and the citizen, between
the private man and the public man, a split which also introduces
division between the individual and society, and between the individual
and himself:

"The
individual leads not only in thought, in consciousness, but in reality,
a double life, a heavenly and an earthly life, a life in the political
community, wherein he counts as a member of the community, and a life
in civil society, wherein he is active as a private person, regarding
other men as a means, degrading himself as a means and becoming a
plaything of alien powers. The political state is related to civil
society as spiritualistically as heaven is to earth." [53]

This
applies to the political state which has attained its complete
development, i.e., the most modern, the most democratic state. The
state is essentially of the same nature as religion even when it has
set itself apart from religion and fights against it. There is a state
religiosity inseparable from the very existence of the state because
the state is in the same relation to real life as heaven to earth: it
is above real life, it soars or seems to soar above it. It subdues real
life in the same way as religion overcomes the limitations of the
profane world.

"Man
in his outermost reality, in civil society, is a profane being. Here,
where he is a real individual for himself and others, he is an untrue
phenomenon. In the state, on the other hand, where the individual is a
generic being, he is the imaginary member of an imagined sovereignty;
he is robbed of his real individual life and filled with an unreal
universality." [54]

Marx
criticizes the splitting up of rights into the rights of man and the
rights of the citizen. Man and his consciousness are thereby torn
between all‑embracing political, juridical, and philosophical fictions
on the one hand, and narrow, limited realities on the other. The rights
of the citizen are abstract, fictitious. All they grant the individual
is an imaginary sovereignty within an unreal universality; as for the
rights of man, they are in effect the rights of the selfish individual
and, in bourgeois society, they come down to the right of ownership of
private property.

"In
the moments of heightened consciousness, the political life seeks to
suppress its fundamental conditions, civil society and its elements,
and to constitute itself as the real and uncontradictory generic life
of the individual. It is, however, only enabled to do this by a
flagrant violation of its conditions of life, by declaring the
revolution to be permanent." [55]

Political
life crushes everyday life, economic life, the life of real
individuals. It destroys its own conditions when it seems to become
more intense, when it sets itself above ordinary everyday life. It
negates its own prerequisites "by declaring the revolution to be
permanent." The "permanent revolution" ends inevitably in the
restoration of religion, private property, and the elements of civil
society, just as war ends in peace. Marx obviously was thinking of
Jacobinism here, but what is in question is of far wider relevance. The
concept of "permanent" or “total” revolution
preoccupies, even obsesses Marx. He sometimes acclaims and proclaims
it, sometimes distrusts it. The text quoted here is directed against
the state, politics as such. History has known periods in which
political life was so intense that it destroyed its own conditions of
existence, when permanent revolution led to restoration of the status
quo ante and
"depoliticalization."

"The
members of the political state are religious by virtue of the dualism
between individual life and the generic life, between the life of civil
society and the political life; they are religious to the extent that
the individual regards as his true life the political life beyond his
real individuality." [56]

Marx's
critique is directed against political life itself:

"Religion
is here the spirit of civil society, the expression of the separation
and the alienation of man from man. The political democracy is
Christian to the extent that it regards every individual as the
sovereign, the supreme being, but this really signifies the individual
in his uncultivated, unsocial aspect, the individual in his fortuitous
existence, the individual just as he is, the individual as he is
destroyed, lost, and alienated through the whole organization of our
society, as he is given under the dominance of inhuman conditions and
elements, in a word, the individual who is not yet a real generic
being. The sovereignty of the individual, as an alien being
distinguished from the real individual, which is the chimera, the
dream, and the postulate of Christianity, is under democracy sensuous
reality, the present, and the secular maximum." [57]

On
several occasions Marx developed the thesis according to which
democracy is to other forms of the state as Christianity is to other
religions, Christianity places man at the summit, but this man is
alienated. Similarly, democracy places man at the summit, but this man
is alienated, too, not the real, fully developed man. Why? Because
democracy is a political state.

Marx's
criticism of the "rights of man" takes a similar line. The rights of
man, he observes, are distinguished from the rights of the citizen. But
what is man as distinguished from the citizen? Nothing other than a
member of civil society. Why is the member of civil society called
"man" pure and simple, and why are his rights called "the rights of
man"? What can account for this?

"The
so‑called rights of man, as distinguished from the rights of the
citizen, are nothing else than the rights of the member of civil
society, that is, of the egoistic individual, of man separated from man
and the community. . . . The freedom in question is the freedom of the
individual as an isolated atom thrown back upon himself. . . . The
right of man to freedom is not based upon the connection of man with
man, but rather on the separation of man from man. It is the right to
this separation, the right of the individual limited to himself." [58]

The
practical application of the right of man to freedom, Marx goes on to
say, is his right to private property, and hence, the right to enjoy
and dispose of his property at will, without regard for others,
independently of society. It is the right of self-interest. Individual
freedom in this sense is the basis of civil society. As a result, every
man finds in other men not the realization but rather the limitation of
his freedom. In short, none of the so‑called rights of man goes beyond
the egoistic individual.

"Political
man is only the abstract, artificial individual, the individual as an
allegorical, moral person . . . . All emancipation leads back to the
human world, to human relationships, to men themselves. Political
emancipation is the reduction of man, on the one side, to the egoistic
member of civil society, to the egoistic, independent individual, on
the other side to the citizen, to the moral person . . . .

"Not
until the real, individual man is identical with the citizen, and has
become a generic being in his empirical life, in his individual work,
in his individual relationships, not until man has recognized and
organized his own capacities as social capacities so that the social
energies are no longer divided by the political power, not until then
will human emancipation be achieved." [59]

Not
until individual man has reconquered himself, has put an end to
political alienation, has recovered the social energies taken away from
him, and has become a social being qua
individual—not until he has recognized and organized his own
energies as social energies (and we shall presently see the exact
meaning of these terms), i.e., when the political form and power (the
state) no longer exist outside him, above him—not until then
is human (as distinguished from political) emancipation achieved. The
road leading to freedom is full of obstacles and accidents, especially
the political emancipations that are mistaken for true liberations.

Let
us turn now to Marx's critical notes on Hegel's philosophy of the
state, dating from 1843. [60] "The actual relationship of the family
and civil society to the state," he writes, "is conceived of by Hegel
as their inner, imaginary
activity.'' In actual fact,
family and civil society are presupposed by the state, whereas in
Hegel's speculation this relationship is inverted. When you assert that
the "subject" is the Idea—i.e., a mind or even a supermind,
an absolute—the real subjects, such as civil society,
families, and any or all actual circumstances become unreal "moments"
of the Idea. This is a clear example of Hegel's panlogical mysticism,
of how he hypostatizes the absolute Idea. Hegel does not take the
object as his point of departure; he deduces the objective world from
an Idea that is intrinsically complete in the realm of logic. In this
way, concludes Marx, the political categories spring into existence as
the most abstract logicometaphysical categories.

"Hegel
starts from the state and makes man the subjectivized state; democracy
starts from man and makes the state the objectivized man. Just as it is
not religion that creates man, but man who creates religion, so the
constitution does not create the people, but the people create the
constitution. In a sense, democracy is to all political forms what
Christianity is to all other religions. . . .

"Democracy
is the essence of all state constitutions, it is socialized man as the
constitution of a specific state; it is to other constitutions as the
genus to its species, only here the genus itself appears as an
existent, and hence as a particular species. . . . In monarchies, for
example, or republics . . . political man has his particular existence
side by side with nonpolitical, private man. Property, marriage,
contracts, civil society . . . here play the part of contents, and the
state that of pure form." [61]

Hegel,
then, views the state as a form that organizes a formless content.
Without the state the content would relapse into chaos. This conception
of the state, derived from Hegel, is still frequently put forward in
our own day.

"In
democracy," Marx goes on to say, "the political state itself . . . is
merely a particular content, something like the particular way of life
of its people. . . . The modern French interpreted this in the sense
that in a true democracy the state is eliminated.'' Complete and true
democracy is not merely a political regime superior to others, but
implies the disappearance of political democracy itself, i.e., of the
state. On this score Marx takes up and develops an idea advanced by
Saint‑Simon. According to the latter's well‑known parable, if any ten
statesmen, ten generals, and ten princes were suddenly abducted from
any country, the country would keep on functioning exactly as before.
But if the ten leading scientists, the ten leading technicians, and the
ten leading industrialists were abducted, society could no longer
function.

At
the time, this idea was "in the air" in France, thanks largely to
Saint‑Simon's writings. Marx's criticism of Hegel is not confined to
the theory of the state; his aim is not merely to replace it with his
own theory of the state: his criticism foreshadows also his theory of
the withering away of the state, of its eventual disappearance from
history. It is a fundamental criticism, which goes much farther than
mere analysis plus a few objections.

Marx
devotes several pages of his critical notes to Hegel's "estates," i.e.
partial groups such as trades, corporations, the family, etc. Among
these Hegel mentions a propertyless "estate" dependent on "concrete"
labor. This "estate," Marx observes, is more than just a part of civil
society—in the modern state it is the foundation upon which
all other "estates" rest.

Concerning
the relations between the Estates and the Executive, Hegel wrote:

“It
is important . . . to emphasize this aspect of the matter because of
the popular, but most dangerous prej­udice which regards the
Estates principally from the point of view of their opposition to the
Executive, as if that were their essential attitude. If the Estates
become an organ of the whole by being taken into the state, they evince
themselves solely through their mediating function. In this way their
opposition to the Executive is reduced to a show. . . . If they were
opposed not merely superficially, but actually and in substance, then
the state would be in the throes of destruction.” [62]

What
Hegel is trying to say, is that the "Estates"—corporations,
trades, we might say today, labor unions, in short, the components of
civil society—are not really opposed to the government, and
that to think otherwise is a dangerous mistake. They must be viewed as
organs of the whole, i.e., integrated in the higher category of the
state. Thus conciliation comes to the fore, conflict moves to the
background. Hegel himself sees that if the contradictions between the
components of civil society and the state were real, the state would be
undermined and eventually destroyed. Marx carries Hegel's insight a
step farther.

Criticism
of the state (including the democratic state) is very explicitly and
emphatically linked by Marx with criticism of philosophy and goes far
beyond mere criticism of the Hegelian system. Both state and political
institutions, he notes, are "representative." Now, "representation"
(whether we take the term in the philosophical or the political sense)
is always abstract in relation to concrete human beings. In science
abstract concepts are gradually narrowed down, corrected, verified, and
modified to grasp reality more fully and concretely. Political
representation, however, is modified only politically, i.e., in the
course of real action, actual struggles connected with society's
political needs and the pressures of social forces. Here the process
has a more dramatic character than in theoretical knowledge. The
abstract character of political representation (the people's
representatives and their representative institutions) can be palliated
through reform, but never overcome. Revolutionary praxis does not aim
merely at reforming the representative systems, but at abolishing them
and replacing them with the rational management of things and human
freedom, and with transparent, direct relationships between men.

Philosophical
representations are just as abstract as political representation, and
this abstractness is not the only thing they have in common. On the one
hand, the concepts of freedom, justice, consciousness, rationality have
both political and philosophical connotations, elements borrowed from
both reality (praxis) and ideologies. Philosophy can be realized, the
true and the good can enter into praxis only if freedom is more than
political representation and justice more than a political ideal, in
other words, only when democracy fulfills its aspirations and goals,
going beyond its own political institutions. On the other hand,
philosophical representations have always been bound up with political
groups: it is in this sense that philosophy is ideological. More
particularly, the great bureaucracies—those of the Church as
well as those of the state—have given rise to systems. A
bureaucracy needs an ontology. Materialism and its opposite,
spiritualism, were the expression of, and served as the justification
for, machineries of state which required the elaboration of a
metaphysics. [63] Thus the theory of the abolition (i.e., realization)
of philosophy is closely connected with the theory of the abolition of
the supreme political abstraction, the withering away of the state.

According
to Marx, there is no such thing as "true democracy." To him the sense
of democracy is that it discloses the truth of politics. He sees it not
as a system but as a process which comes down essentially to a struggle
for democracy. The latter is never completed because democracy can
always be carried forward or forced back. The purpose of the struggle
is to go beyond democracy and beyond the democratic state, to build a
society without state power.

Of
special interest to political sociology today are Marx's notes on
bureaucracy. Max Weber is frequently credited with having first drawn
attention to the importance of bureaucracy and having initiated its
analysis. And indeed his achievement is the more impressive for the
fact that he did not know Marx's critical notes on Hegel's philosophy
of the state. Marx did anticipate Weber: he was the first to subject
bureaucracy to a critical study, taking as his point of departure
Hegel's praise of it.

According
to Hegel the "Civil servants and the members of the executive
constitute the greater part of the middle class, the class in which the
consciousness of right and the developed intelligence of the mass of
the people is found."" He goes on to argue that the state should
therefore favor the middle class; it is best served when it has a
competent devoted officialdom whose powers—in the case of
their misuse—are limited by the rights of the other
components of civil society. Thus directly below the cultivated class,
the elite of which fill the ministries, we have the rights of the
corporations. Above that class are the political institutions and the
sovereign. Below it fall the various groups of special interests. Above
it is the general interest represented by the state and the government.
Thus Hegel starts from the premise that the state is distinct from
civil society (i.e., the "Estates," the "corporations," and the crafts
or trades—which in his day described the chief divisions of
civil society), and assigns to a bureaucracy the role of mediator
between the two.

"And
that's all there is to it!" Marx observes ironically. Hegel contents
himself with an empirical description of bureaucracy. This description
of how the modern state functions is in part objective, and in part
reflects the favorable opinion bureaucracy has of itself. Hegel does
not criticize it in depth, does not go beyond purely formal
considerations, never inquiring into the content, whereas here more
than elsewhere, form is inseparable from content. The fact is,
according to Marx, bureaucracy comes down to a "formalism" applied to a
content outside it. [65]

Interrelations
among social groups account for their "representations," i.e., the way
they see and understand themselves (or rather, misunderstand
themselves). These representations are only partly rational, they do
not adequately express the knowledge society or even any privileged
group within it has of itself. It is only too true that the social
division of labor—superimposed on the technological
division—provides the bureaucracy with its basis, namely, the
separation between particular and general interests, between private
life and public life. We are aware of this, and Hegel recognized it in
his fashion, but Hegel sanctions this separation, this split, by
assuming that social relationships and representations developed on
this foundation are just and true. He takes for granted the complete,
definitive rationality of this state of affairs, although his own
analysis of it proves the opposite. The existence of bureaucracy
presupposes the existence of separate social units linked by means
extraneous to their internal organization. As a result, the bureaucracy
sees the corporations and estates as its material counterpart; the
corporations and estates see the bureaucracy as their ideal
counterpart. The ideas they have of each other are "ideological,"
though in the text under discussion Marx does not yet use this term. He
uses philosophical terms: "The corporations are the materialism of
bureaucracy, and the bureaucracy is the spiritualism of the
corporations." [66] Actually, within civil (nonpolitical) society, the
state is itself a corporation. The two social forms presuppose each
other, overlap, refer to, and justify each other.

In
Hegel's philosophy these relationships are presented as rational and
harmonious. Actually, this philosophy is ideological, it masks and
disguises reality. And yet the conflicts show through. Where a
bureaucracy is set, the state interest (represented by this
bureaucracy) becomes a distinct entity which encompasses both the
special interests of the corporations and the other social bodies and
the so‑called general interest,
i.e., that of society as a whole. That is how, according to Hegel, the
state and the bureaucracy inseparable from it become
“actualized.” Although bureaucracy presupposes the
existence of special groups, it is led to struggle against them in the
course of defending its own interests. Let us now suppose that as a
result of over‑all processes of growth organic bonds have begun to form
between the various partial groups, and that society seeks to abolish
the corporative structure which impedes its development. If this takes
place, the bureaucracy will work very hard to preserve this structure.
Why? Because the bureaucracy, a civil society within the political
society, the state, would crumble away if the corporative structure,
i.e., a state within civil society, were eliminated. From this
situation derive the complex tactics and strategy of the bureaucrats.
The crumbling away of the civil society within the political society
(i.e., the bureaucracy) and of the political society within the civil
society (the corporations and the corporative spirit) would mark "the
end of spiritualism and its opposite, materialism." [67] Philosophical
representations and political representation would lose their
foundation, their reason for existence, Philosophy, with its
ideological corollaries and implications, would disappear.

The
definitive rationality Hegel ascribes to society and the state turns
out to be peculiarly limited, "spirit" rather than reason, a
metaphysical transposition, an absolutizing of the actually existing
limitations which impede progress. In a society whose highest
expression is the state, the limitations are experienced as
transcendent in philosophy, religion, and other manifestations of the
"spirit"—the same spirit which creates corporations within
society—and the bureaucracy within the state. The corporative
spirit and the bureaucratic spirit are occasionally in conflict, but
form a defensive alliance whenever their existence is threatened by a
movement of society as a whole.

Bureaucracy
is a form, then, the form of a society dominated by the state, the
actual content of which Hegel does not discuss, confining himself to
the form of bureaucracy and asserting its rationality. Bureaucracy has
this particular feature, that it tends to separate itself from its own
content. It does not confine itself to formally organizing, to imposing
its own form on, that content. It becomes a "formalism," and qua
formalism it presents itself as
superior "consciousness," "the will of the state," the actual state
power. Thus a particular interest (bureaucracy's own) lays claim to
universality while the general interest is reduced thereby to the
status of a special interest. The bureaucracy, the apparatus of the
state, profits from the very confusion it creates and feeds. It
protects "the imaginary universality of the special interest," [68]
namely, its own spirit. The bureaucracy recognizes the components of
civil society only at this fictitious level. This clever transposition
may be successful, for although each particular component turns its
special interest against the bureaucracy, it accepts the bureaucracy
and even supports it, using it as a weapon against the other particular
components and special interests. As a result, "The bureaucracy qua
the perfect corporation is victorious over the corporation qua
imperfect bureaucracy." [69] It
reduces the corporations to a mere appearance, but it wants this
appearance to exist and to believe in its own existence in order to
preserve its own conditions of existence as mere conditions
(subordinate to it). Consequently, while every corporation tends to
form a kind of little state within civil society, the bureaucracy is
nothing but the state transmuted into a kind of civil (i.e.,
nonpolitical) society.

In
the course of this transmutation, state formalism, i.e., the state qua
formalism, becomes a reality. It
constitutes itself as actual power, it gives itself a content. This
means that the bureaucracy is a tissue of practical
illusions. It is a sort of
praxis but one shot through with illusions about itself, its place in
the whole, its importance, and its competence. Realities, fictions,
illusions are all mixed up together in the actual exercise of its
functions. The bureaucracy embodies and furthers the illusion that the
state is indispensable and rational. "The bureaucratic spirit is
entirely Jesuitic, theological. The bureaucrats are the Jesuits and
theologians of politics. The bureaucracy is la
république prêtre."
[70]

Once
again analysis obliges us to reject Hegel's identification of the real
and the rational, Being and knowing (or consciousness). Seen in its
actual density, reality turns out to be full of gaps and disguises
woven out of actually experienced illusions and illusions born of
illusion. The state bureaucracy embodies a certain rationality, but it
is an incomplete, deceptive, and even mendacious rationality. [ . . . .
.]